Imaging apparatuses for diagnosis have been widely used to perform diagnoses of arteriosclerosis, and preoperative diagnoses during intra-vascular treatment using a high-performance catheter such as a balloon catheter or a stent, or to check postoperative results.
The imaging apparatus for diagnosis includes an intra-vascular ultra sound diagnostic apparatus (IVUS) and an optical coherence tomography apparatus (OCT) and the like, each of which has characteristics different from each other.
Recently, an imaging apparatus for diagnosis has been proposed in which the function of the IVUS and the function of the OCT are combined (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 11-56752 and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2010-508973). In the imaging apparatus for diagnosis, a transmitting and receiving unit for IVUS and a transmitting and receiving unit for OCT are disposed in a distal end portion of an imaging core which is interpolated into a probe, and two types of tomographic images can be generated by using an ultrasonic wave and light which are respectively transmitted and received in the transmitting and receiving units.
In other words, when the imaging apparatus for diagnosis is used, it is possible to generate a tomographic image taking an advantage of the characteristics of the IVUS which can measure up to a high depth region and an advantage of the characteristics of the OCT which can measure an area in high resolution.